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Unbeknownst to the public, hidden within the ruins of Midgar, a malevolent organization known as Deepground seeks to rectify the failures of Sephiroth. Their goal is simple; to awaken the power of Omega and destroy all life.

Yet, to my eventual disappointment, it is the online mode itself that represents all that is wrong with this port. Sure some will gripe about the difficulty of the AI, or go into the small inaccuracies of the sound and visual quality, but the true monster lies on the other side.

So, suppose you get almost to the end of the stage and you just can’t seem to get in a good position to kick that squirrel. He throws one acorn to many or a bird dive bombs you when you’re not expecting it and you take one hit more than your stamina can withstand. Garfield collapses to the ground and goes to sleep. That’s about as violent as the game ever gets, and what it really means in gamer terms is that you’ve just lost a life.

The teammate that tags along fails to help matters much; their only use on the battlefield is to draw opposition away from you while they get sliced to ribbons and inflict miserable damage -- even if this appears to be completely contradictory. Take Black Whirlwind, a huge muscle-bound psychopath who lives for mindless violence, a search for the perfect wine and bragging rights. The plot would have you believe that this shaved bear of a man is an unstoppable homicide factory, yet when it is time for his twin axes to be tested, you will often see him being smacked about by even the weakest of foes, leaving you alone to plough through targets unaided.

When you get a warlord, you then get to decide which available unit you’d like to associate him with. So, let’s say you have a few groups of chariot-riding fiends. He can join them and their power will be boosted accordingly. But they’re hardly invincible, or else the game would be too imbalanced. No, they’re just the slightest bit stronger.

That’s the best thing about X-Men Legends; it totally discards any of that overbearing crap. There is a story, there are plot twists, but, ultimately, it’s about Magneto trying to dominate the world and the X-Men trying to stop him. The game establishes that and reminds you with the occasional cutscene, but it’s all business beyond that.

Head outside of a town and it’s more of the same, with green plains stretching as far as you can see toward featureless hills broken up only by the occasional tree or stone walkway. There’s also plenty of mist, and you’ll see enemies patrolling. There aren’t random battles in Blade Dancer, just scripted events and other confrontations that you can often avoid simply by running from floating enemy icons (sometimes they’ll even run from you if they’re particularly week).

Scattered throughout each of the available tracks are alternate routes you can take if the mood strikes you. Plenty of games have done that before, but usually it’s just something along the lines of "go left around the big tree instead of right." There’s some of that here, but it’s not emphasized so much as it is simply snuck into place.

Just like every other right-thinking individual, I eagerly anticipate the day/night/nuclear winter when the infernal legions of darkness rise up from their graves in order to crush the living beneath their desiccated heels. Hence the most noteworthy thing about this game is that it’s essentially George Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead adapted into a graphic adventure.

Sometimes making the wrong decision leads to a setback, a step missed along the way. Sometimes it leads into a side story you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, like a quaint night of ice-skating between two friends. Sometimes it leads to a game over. The roads diverge, cross, and one of Indigo Prophecy’s biggest appeals is that it encourages experimentation.

Prey's basic concept, which most players have seen five or six times before, is this: a reluctant hero has been sucked into battle against homicidal aliens! A mysterious, metallo-organic sphere hovers above the Earth, ripping entire chunks of the planet apart and dumping civilians into harvesting machines (reminiscent of War of the Worlds). With his girlfriend's life at stake, without any friends by his side, Cherokee Tommy — the hero — must creep his way through a bunch of linear levels to put an end to the alien menace.

Information exchanges hands like cash, body parts are put on the open market, and corporations hire mercenaries to do their bidding. As an outcast in an already downtrodden society, even you have signed your life away to the corporations with the slim hope of a brighter future.

Know from the start that every glimpse of promise, every flicker of macabre brilliance and every fleeting second of spine-chilling horror will crash and burn, leaving only a lingering air of disappointment and wasted potential. Because from the second the game starts, so does its biggest flaw.

Blinky is riding you like a cowboy on a bronco and you’re doomed if you don’t reach the side warp in time. Every millisecond counts. You round a bend and you need to head left for safety, so you press the button. What happens on-screen? Pac-Man moves down.

Hideo Kojima’s SNATCHER is a kickass graphic adventure that’s best described as an inspired synthesis of “Blade Runner,” “Terminator,” and “Wacky Japanese Perverts on Parade.” No doubt you’re already well aware of this thanks to the highly sought-after Sega CD port, but the MSX2 original is definitely worth checking out – particularly since it’s been completely translated into English.

The level design takes advantage of each character’s unique attributes. If you’re in control of Chowder, you can expect fewer enemies, yet battles that are every bit as tough because your adversaries can take a lot of damage and keep right on attacking. Jenny, meanwhile, is constantly swarmed by animated chairs and other menaces that will bite savagely into her life meter if she doesn’t keep moving wide of their assault.

So it is that we come to a new question: though Galaga has ‘worked’ for many years, how does it fare on the Xbox 360? The answer is that it does quite well for itself, if you’re not expecting anything more than what the game has always been.

However, I soon realized that virtually everything had suddenly been reduced to nothing more than speed bumps. If an enemy hit me, I didn’t even flinch. My preferred boss strategy was simply to stand in front of the villain and hit the “attack” button as rapidly as I could until it perished. At some point in the game, Sadler learned magic. I never cast a single spell. I also didn’t bother purchasing the stat-enhancing items and only used a total of four healing goods (two during the final boss fight).